food security

Increased attention and visibility of land rights issues is a testimony of their critical role for achieving economic growth in an inclusive and sustainable manner. On Friday, April 21, 2017, a panel of policymakers and representatives from development partners, civil society, and academia came together to discuss the importance of secure land rights as the basic building block for other development actions.

Land is a complex issue to manage because it cuts across so many different elements of the sustainable development agenda. Throughout the discussion panelists emphasized the importance of securing land and property rights for improving food security, reducing forced displacement, protecting landscapes, reducing carbon emissions, and empowering women.

The panelists shared the view that a lot more needs to be done if we want to improve the security of land rights on a mass scale and achieve the land-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. It was noted that new technologies provide additional mechanisms for reaching these goals, but a thorough consideration to political economy issues is critical for success. South-South dialogues and a strong focus on capacity building were identified as key strategies to formulate simplified, innovative solutions, especially for Africa. While political will is essential, governments and the development community should partner more with the private sector in promoting awareness at the community level about the importance of secure land rights for development.

Finally, the panelists recognized that the World Bank is playing a critical role in promoting secure land rights and welcomed the proposal of creating a new global partnership – the Land 2030 Global Partnership. The Partnership seeks to raise the profile of land and poverty issues and give a boost to unblock land and property rights for the majority of the world’s population.

View tweets from the session below. Learn more about the World Bank's work on land here.

I was with the World Bank delegation at the Habitat III Conference in Quito last week, reflecting on the future of cities and speaking at a panel on food security. While there, I could not help but remember the story of Wara, an indigenous Aymara woman, one of eight children from a poor rural family living in the Bolivian Altiplano. Poverty forced her to migrate to the city when she was young.

Now living in La Paz, Wara has been working as a nanny in households for decades. She has three teenagers. Her oldest son is overweight and has already had several health problems. He occasionally works with his father building houses. The other kids are still in school and Wara hopes that armed with an education, they will be able to find a good job.

According to statistics, Wara is no longer poor. Indeed, Wara and her family are better off when compared to her modest origins. The truth is, however, that she is vulnerable and can easily fall back into poverty and hunger.

As in most Aymara families, Wara’s husband administers the money, including her own earnings, but she is the food-provider for the family. Each Saturday he gives Wara some money to get food for the week. She wakes up early to go to one of the four big markets in La Paz to buy basic staples such as potatoes, fresh vegetables, rice, sugar and oil, among others.

Reported figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on food loss and food waste highlight its importance to the global environment. Food loss and waste annually contribute 3.3 gigagrams of CO2 equivalent, or over twice the total emissions of India; waste 250 cubic kilometers of water which is equivalent to 100 million Olympic-sized swimming pools; and 1.4 billion hectares of agricultural land, an area larger than China. Considering that, if only 1/4 of the food lost or wasted across the globe could be recovered, it could feed 750 million people, it is also shocking when presented in the context of global food insecurity and hunger.

These statistics highlight the need to address the problem as global citizens. But if you look at it closer, the incentives for action are indeed very local, making cities—as the centers of consumption in the world—important game changers with strong reasons to take action.

In a country where, in some places, a burger barely costs a dollar while a bag of baby carrots is priced nearly thrice as much, there’s plenty of work to be done to make healthy foods affordable – and accessible. There is no denying that food insecurity (of which cheap and nutritionally inadequate junk food is a major manifestation) is a concern in the US. In fact, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) nearly 14.5 per cent of Americans experienced food insecurity at some point in 2010.

To fight this, many cities across the US are assessing their food production potential and creating special legislation for promoting urban agriculture. Let me clarify that “urban” agriculture does not imply turning down high-density buildings in the city centers to build farms. As an urban planner I am a supporter of higher densities. However, the leftover land around the cities or the residential open spaces with no other obvious use could be used as productive fragments of land within the cities. But more on this later - maybe another blog entry!

In the US, urban agriculture began at the grassroots level as a social justice movement to combat food insecurity among under-privileged communities. Within a couple of decades, a growing demand resulted in local governments making an active effort to support urban agriculture. Sometime ago I documented some of New Orleans’ urban farms with my video camera.

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